The Arsonist in the Organization
by Anaxn
Summary: Of course Organization XIII had a few tagalongs. In all the worlds, there weren't only fourteen people with strong hearts. Xemnas just didn't give them all numbers. But this one in particular stood out. Perhaps because he caused explosions. Everywhere.
1. Introductions

Just a quick note. This story contains two characters. One belongs to my friend Astrum Ululatum. The other, the main character, is a product of us both. I simply happened to write this randomness.

If there were ever an odder pair than these two, Xemnas thought to himself, he doubted he would ever find them. Looking down at the grey landscape from the battlements of the Castle That Never Was, he focused on the only two spots of color anywhere. Both were moving, which usually meant life, but not in this case. They were both Nobodies, beings without a heart, without emotion, but they didn't act like it as they chatted away, seemingly oblivious to the absolute desolation around them. The beings in question were both human, or at least had been: one male, one female. Since they arrived at the castle on the same day and in the same manner, Xemnas assumed they must have come from the same place. He never bothered to find out where. But wherever it was, it must have been very different from any world he had ever visited. For example, the way they dressed. Since he had not deigned to make them full members of the Organization, they were not allowed to wear the cloaks but they probably wouldn't have even if they could.

The girl, sitting on the rim of the chasm below, was entirely dressed in purple and orange, from her "converse" shoes and knee-high socks to her vest and long-sleeve shirt. Even her hair was striped in the same clashing colors, as though both clothes and wearer were designed to be as annoying as possible. Her voice drifted to where Xemnas was standing, making him narrow his eyes in feigned disapproval. The boy as well had unusual taste in clothes, although less nerve-grating. The loose black pants and combat boots were normal enough; however, they were dyed red and above this, he wore an open "flak" vest which, although the boy had called it armor, still didn't compensate for the fact that he did not wear a shirt under it. Xemnas could hear his voice as well, responding to the girl with a flip of his scarlet ponytail and a grin.

Their hearts were strong, it was true; that was how they had survived. It was merely a pity Kingdom Hearts never specified what kind of strength. The girl had professed to being on "crack" when she was attacked, some kind of drug from her world, and from what he heard about it, it certainly did take strength to continue using. However, this unfortunate set of circumstances had left her eternally affected by the drug and Xemnas soon grew tired of her spasmodic and random ways. He watched as she now balanced on the pit's rim, teetering over the edge on the balls of her feet but never quite tipping it. Instead she floated, rocking back and forth like a balloon in a breeze. Her element was mass, which was what allowed her to do this. The boy laughed and snapped his fingers, disappearing from sight for a second, then reappeared behind her and gave her a shove. She flew over the edge, letting out a short yelp, then quickly readjusted herself and began scolding him from her position in midair over the chasm. Xemnas smirked a little. The boy had one of the most useful elements besides himself and his second in command: instant teleportation. As much as the girl was a burden, he was a boon. If he had not insisted on joining with the girl, the superior almost would have admitted him into regular ranks.

The mass element suddenly chucked a boomerang at the boy, who teleported himself back to his original seat as Xemnas scoffed silently. Even her weapon was ridiculous and, it seemed to him, utterly useless. Merely a toy compared to everyone else's. Again, the boy seemed much more useful. The red head summoned a large metal tube, which he rested on a large pad on his shoulder. A wide belt appeared around his waist, rockets resting in holders around it, and he chose one of them and loaded it into the tube. The boy had called it a "Panzerschreck", which he then translated as "a German rocket launcher". None of this had made any sense to Xemnas until the boy demonstrated, as he was doing now by launching one of the rockets at the girl. She squealed, sending herself high into the air and just missing colliding with the black projectile. A sudden explosion made the castle shake, nearly pitching Number one off balance. Below him, he saw the boy look up, heard him swear in some language he didn't recognize, and disappear. The girl also looked up, waved, and then formed a darkness portal and walked through. Having regained his balance, he shook his head. Now he would have to find the two. And scold them. Sighing, Xemnas pulled up his own portal, wondering to himself about the amount of trouble those two could create.


	2. Axel

It's really nice, isn't it?"

"...Yes it is." Another lick of flame caressed the body of the Fat Bandit Heartless brought in from Agrabah. It struggled, only slightly, against the thick ropes that tied its chubby, overstretched arms to the large eyehooks driven into the dark rock. The fire tasted its skin again, flaring up over its clothes from a small pile of blackening powder beneath it.

"Slow burning. The buggers wouldn't light fast enough, so I thought I'd try this, see if it caught."

"I'd say it does." The owner of the voice gestured slightly and the flames suddenly leapt up, singeing the Heartless's vest and sending the rotund creature through another set of feeble rolls.

"Hey! Don't accelerate the burning! This formula isn't made-" The speaker was cut off as the powder exploded, sending a puff of it out like volcanic ash. The rest lit up green against the Heartless's purple skin, traced through with black as it pierced the creature's thick hide. The second man glared at the first, who shrugged almost sheepishly.

"What? How was I supposed to know it would do that? You're the explosive expert." They turned to the Fat-Bandit-Turned-Bonfire, pine and pitch colored flames dancing elegantly. The first man began tossing a spiked chakram into the air, silver edged with red the color of his spiked hair. There was silence between the two for a while, one tossing his weapon up and down, the other inspecting both the incendiary powder and the Heartless, which was still rolling weakly from side to side as its essence leaked into the air.

"I really need to find a way to put it into a gel form. Make it stick so it can burn all the way through." The man sat back down, tossing his scarlet braid behind him again and tucking his notepad into a pocket of his open flak vest. The other shrugged, making individual tongues of flame blaze up separately, setting fire to the few unburned parts of the Heartless. Once again, there was silence but for the crackle of Heartless burning and unraveling, of green and black flames.

"....It's really nice, isn't it?"

"....Yeah."


	3. Vexen

Vexen walked worriedly down the stairs to his lab, hoping all the while that he would find it still intact. It had been a full 24 hours since he had allowed Xilepphi to attempt to create a new compound there and since then, he had not seen hide nor hair of the man. For everyone else, it was a blessing; it meant that the unofficial member of the Organization would not be randomly appearing to distract them from whatever they were doing and/or blowing up some other part of the castle. However, it usually didn't take him this long to make something new explode and so, Vexen was right to be distressed.

"Hopefully he's gone and blown himself up. Maybe one of his formulas has finally gone wrong." Xigbar had sulked after Number four had announced his destination, rubbing his eye patch as if to remember his most recent game of "Tag" with the explosive expert. The ice element certainly hoped not; it would have left a most horrendous mess and more explosive compounds than Vexen cared to dispose of safely.

He arrived warily at his lab door on one of the lowest floors of the castle. The door was still whole, untouched, and on its hinges. Staring distrustfully at the _clean_ doorknob, Vexen approached it carefully, reaching out and gently turning it. It gave willingly, not hitch or click to indicate some unknown tripwire striking a match to an unknown compound. Opening the door cautiously and peering around it, he was greeted by complete and total blackness....which did nothing to ease his worry. Squeezing through the narrow crack, the ice element slowly began retracing his habit-formed steps, a path designed to keep his precious supplies on their shelves. He headed towards his "Dangerous Chemicals" room, as this was where he had last left the man.

The plexiglass room was dark...like everything else in his lab. Entering the sealed, mostly blast-proof room and closing the door behind him for the safety of the rest of the castle, he pulled out the flashlight he had been saving for such an occasion and scanned the floor of the room. It too was suspiciously clean, except for a few minor black marks he didn't remember. Vexen continued towards the desk he knew should be in the center of the room.

His fears were laid to rest when Number four found the scarlet-haired arsonist bent double over the work bench, carefully measuring out some grayish-silvery powder into a tare, surrounded by various vials and tinted jars filed with a rainbow of ingredients. For a few seconds, the scientist within him nearly screamed at the lack of safety measures: he wore no lab coat, rubber gloves, or even goggles on his head. And then he remembered that none of that really mattered. Plus, this was Xilepphi he was talking about.

"You know, you're going to ruin your vision like that." Vexen chided, flashing the light beam from the explosive expert to his chemicals on the table. The other man suddenly jumped, nearly spilling some of the powder, grimacing.

"And you're ruining my dark vision! Now get out!" Xilepphi snapped at the newcomer, topaz eyes nearly shut against the bright light. He hurriedly returned to his experiment, shuffling the powder back into a neat pile on the tare and setting it aside. Ignoring the command as he rightfully could, the ice element continued over to the table, inspecting its contents as he was pointedly passed over by the red head. Along with the newly side-boarded one, there were three other tares on the table: a large pile of pale blue glowing faintly, almost like paint chips but smaller, a tower of what appeared to be white sand, and one of nearly orange dust that had the consistency of chalk. Turning to the man who was now measuring out gunpowder from a pocket of his flak vest, Vexen pointed to the sand pile and inquired,

"What is this chemical? I'm fairly sure I've never seen anything like it in my lab before."

"Don't touch it!" Xilepphi barked without looking up from his current project. "Don't breath on it, don't look at it, don't blink at it, don't smell it, don't taste it, don't touch it, don't even _think_ about it!" Ending his command by wildly gesturing in Vexen's face with a scoopula, the man tossed his braid back behind him and moved that tare as well to the side of the table.

"Calm down, Xilepphi. I'm just asking you what chemical this is-"

"Do you see this!?!" The bomb expert swung around to face the ice element, holding one of the jars he had picked at random from the table. His frenzied golden eyes were rimmed in a sleep-deprived shade of black. The blond took a step back.

"I don't know what this is," The other man began yelling, "But I bet you anything it's explosive and dangerous. Now if you don't get out of my lab, I will teleport it and a flaming match to your location!!!"

"O-okay, Xilepphi, I'l get out. See? I'm backing towards the door…" Vexen called nervously as he began reversing out of the room, now rather concerned about the red head's sanity. Xilepphi stood there, panting, explosives in hand until Number four quickly shut the door to the Dangerous Chemicals room. Even from behind the thick padding, he could hear a steady stream of Latin cursing as he hurried away.

"Damn, he's twitchy." Vexen muttered as he walked back upstairs, "I wonder what compound's getting his brain in a knot." A muffled explosion suddenly shook the castle, sending him sprawled across the stair, accompanied by a rapid explicative.

"Yes! It works!" Echoed up from the ground floor, followed by a cackle, and Vexen shook his head as he now hurried to report to Xemnas.


	4. Xigbar

Xilepphi grinned in satisfaction as he settled between the one of the large ammunition cases and the space behind the cushy grey and white couch. His target had been exceedingly paranoid, it's true; showing up at the latest meeting armed to the teeth had proved that. And perhaps it was a low blow to be lying in wait for him in his room behind large amounts of furniture. But he was the second in command and therefore, should be continually on his toes. And if he wasn't…. Xilepphi was there to take advantage of that. He loaded the rocket he had specially designed for this occasion into his Panzerschreck and stowed it carefully behind the couch. He counted down the last few seconds until… Xigbar dropped from the ceiling through a spatial portal, striped ponytail flying behind him. His guns were clutched possessively in his hands, straps filled with purple shards criss-crossing his chest. He glanced cautiously, but not carefully, around the room and then turned and began to put away his ammo straps.  
Bad idea, Xilepphi thought, resting his Panzerschreck on the couch back and taking aim. He made sure the rocket was still loaded, then pulled the trigger and let it fly. The force threw him back into the wall and both that and the explosion made Xigbar jump. The red head swore as the second in command leapt back just in time to avoid the rocket, which hit the white wall with a crack and a flash.  
"Holy crack monkeys!" The space element screamed, staring for a second at the long blackened mark, whispering trails of smoke, which read, "Tag!". Now swinging himself around, he pointed at Xilepphi, now revealed, yelling,  
"Hah! You missed me, bastard!" Then he wrenched a hole in space, stepped through it, and disappeared. The arsonist grinned nastily, for he knew where Number Two had gone. The game is on, he thought, snapping his fingers to teleport himself to the training hall.

Another explosion flowered in midair as a well placed shard-bullet pierced a red and black rocket, sending scraps of metal flying and towards the faces of the two combatants. Both flew backwards from the explosion, one through a spatial portal, the other simply appearing on the other side of the large white room.  
"You're gonna have to do better than that!" Xigbar cried, scorch marks decorating both his guns and cloak. Some shrapnel had cut open a few black lines on his cheeks and forehead.  
"You think I'm even trying that hard?" Xilepphi called back, landing on a platform and lowering his weapon in order to load another rocket. He as well had thin black lines on his face and arms, the result of the razor edges of the Freeshooter's ammo. The scarlet haired nobody hefted the Panzerschreck back onto his shoulder pad, then blinked out of sight, leaving Xigbar to carefully scan the room for glimpses of his opponent. Feeling a sudden rush of air behind him, Number Two spun around and unloaded a trio of lavender spearheads in the space where he had been standing, which then embedded themselves in the whitewall there. Somewhat expecting this from Xilepphi, as this was not their first game of Tag, the zebra-haired nobody glanced back and forth around the training hall, looking for shadows on the ground that would indicate where his opponent was. And then he swore silently as he felt the wide barrel of a rocket launcher gently nudging the center of his back.

"Are you prepared to be tagged?" The newest nobody's mockingly tenor voice asked from behind his back as Xigbar quietly prepared a darkness portal directly before his feet.  
"As if!" The eye-patched nobody crowed, and quickly raised the darkness portal to a height of ten feet and rushed through. A swift curse and the explosion of gunpowder followed his heels, but he spun sideways out of the door, letting the rocket shoot off into space, aimed as the portal was right back at Xilepphi. The arsonist let out a yelp as he turned and realized his own projectile was shooting towards him, and pulled the trigger again. The resulting explosion shot Xigbar backwards and engulfed the space element in acrid grey smoke. Keeping excessively quiet despite the adrenaline rushing to his brain, number two desperately tried to see that red hair through the aerial debris. He suppressed another long string of curses after a flying chunk of rock nearly conked him in the head but his restraint failed when the so sought-after man suddenly appeared in front of him.  
"HA!" The attacker cried, flinging an ivory-colored powder all over the Freeshooter's black coat.  
"Dude, what the Hell!" The space element scorned as the smoke cleared, looking down at his cloak, which now seemed to have been splattered with bleach. "You just ruined one of my best outfits!" But the dangerous expression he saw on Xilepphi's face as he looked up stopped his complaints. The man held a lighter.  
"I spent days, working on this in Vexen's lab." The red head said, a mad-scientist look insane enough to rival the ice element's crawling over his face.  
"Uh, what?"  
"You will explode now." He cackled unstably, lobbing the small flame at Xigbar's coat.  
"Tag, you're it!" The arsonist screamed, blinking out of the training area as the lighter slowly arched through the air…  
"Oh, shit-"


	5. Zexion

"Do you know why yet?" Xilepphi stopped playing with one of his lighters long enough to mime confusion to the asker. The glow of Kingdom Hearts behind them illuminating their forms.

"Why what?"

"There's a lot of things. Why are you still alive? Why your element? Why keep existing...? There's a lot of questions you haven't asked." The red head shrugged and resumed his habit-formed flicking, although the small flame barely even shed a circle of light on the shadowy concrete building.

"Most questions are unnecessary."

"Oh, come now! Some of them can be enlightening. For example, what do you remember?" The tiny flare flickered on and off, giving the questioner colored snapshots of the man's blank face, like a portrait on a black wall. The silence of the World-That-Never-Was crushed over them suffocatingly.

"I remember...huge fields, pitted with craters...and ruins." Xilepphi spoke haltingly, tilting his head now to stare fixedly at the sky. "They were overgrown, older than me but not by much. I was visiting there...and I don't remember why." A taint of confusion and awe entered his voice, almost as though he was experiencing his memories for the first time. "I remember a desk," He continued, slightly more animated. "Covered in books on wars and weapons. I was reading them for fun..." His voice trailed off into the emptiness, swallowed by the shadows. Eventually he shrugged, stowing the lighter and pulling out a packet of gunpowder that he began loading into a empty shell.

"Is that all?"

"It's all I can remember." He remarked easily, as he immersed himself in leveling the powder. His companion's charms jingled as the leather coat rustled.

"There must be more than that. Do you know why you still exist?" Xilepphi glared over venemously at the traces of amused mockery in the question. But there was no sign of scorn on the questioner's face, or it was too well hidden, and the red head leaned back as he combed the space in his heart for a purpose. The black gunpowder glimmered in its shell like the dark sky above them. His amberite eyes narrowed in concentration, his red leather boots stopped swinging and he became an old monument, decked in full war gear but now broken and forgotten. Then he shook his head, burgandy braid swinging like the pendulum of a great clock.

"I don't know."

"You don't know or you can't find it?" The interrogater's voice cut back and Xilepphi's face flushed in remembered shame and indignation. "You have it in you; otherwise you wouldn't be here. Let's take a look inside your head then." Quick bootfalls and fingertips crowning his head and he was suddenly launched into a wide, open field. Verdent green flooded his vision and he recognized the ruins from his memories. He felt himself moving over the grass as it brushed against his skin trhough his sandals and the sun beamed brightly down on him. He was holding a map and glancing excitedly from it to his surroundings as he strided among the tall grass and crumbling concrete walls and twisted metal frames and bundles of flowers laid as if on a grave-

Suddenly he was standing before his interrogater, a fistful of coat in his hand as the lifted the other nobody bodily into the air; siloutted against the blackness of the World-That-Never-Was.

"Stop that." Xilepphi growled, brutally aware of the the feeling of sharp and brightly aching pain in his head. "It hurts."

"Emotionally or physically?" His tormentor asked calmly, midnight blue eyes peering out at him from behind his curtain of frosty navy and violet hair. "You cannot hurt emotionally and physical pain will fade."

"Don't," The arsonist emphasized with a ferocious shake, "Push it." Then he disappeared into this air, leaving the nobody to drop suddenly to his feet. Brushing the imaginary dust off his coat, the young scientist looked around his casually, noting the spilled gunpowder on the concrete like black stars in a sky.


End file.
